Before messenger RNA molecules can be translated into amino acids and eventually functional proteins, the primary gene transcripts must be spliced to remove non-coding sequences. Misato Ohtani from the RIKEN Center for Sustainable ...

Researchers from the Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Program at Sydney's Centenary Institute have confirmed that, far from being "junk", the 97 per cent of human DNA that does not encode instructions for making proteins can play ...

X chromosomes are very special genetic material. They differ in number between men and women. To achieve equality between sexes, one out of two X chromosomes in women is silenced. In flies, the opposite happens: in male flies, ...

Earlier this year, MIT researchers developed a way to easily and efficiently edit the genomes of living cells. Now, the researchers have discovered key factors that influence the accuracy of the system, an important step ...

Every cell in an organism's body has the same copy of DNA, yet different cells do different things; for example, some function as brain cells, while others form muscle tissue. How can the same DNA make different things happen? ...

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have trapped the ribosome, a protein-building molecular machine essential to all life, in a key transitional state that has long eluded researchers. Now, for the first ...

You say tomato, I say comparative transcriptomics. Researchers in the U.S., Europe and Japan have produced the first comparison of both the DNA sequences and which genes are active, or being transcribed, between the domestic ...

In the past year a group of synthetic proteins called CRISPR-Cas RNA-guided nucleases (RGNs) have generated great excitement in the scientific community as gene-editing tools. Exploiting a method that some bacteria use to ...